Altrincham’s professional orchestra to play two concerts at Hale church

The Stamford Orchestra, Altrincham and Hale’s very own professional orchestra, are to play two special concerts at St Peter’s Church in Hale.

The orchestra will play both concerts on Saturday February 25th – a performance of Provokiev’s Peter and the Wolf for families at 3.30pm, and then an evening concert at 7.30pm to include Mozart’s Don Giovanni overture and his Symphony No.35 (Haffner), as well as a second performance of Peter and the Wolf narrated by Simon Royce.

The Stamford Orchestra was founded in 2015 by principal oboeist Andrew Pettitt and conductor Thomas Davey with the vision of bringing orchestral music of the highest standard to the people of South Trafford. It has already played a number of concerts at Altrincham’s Market House.

Davey said: “The audience following we have achieved is quite breathtaking; ever since the Stamford Orchestra’s first concert in July 2015 we have achieved sell-out audiences.

The Stamford Orchestra has played a number of concerts in Market House

“We are aware of the difficulty of travelling in and out of Manchester late at night in order to hear high quality classical music so we decided to set up the area’s own orchestra. We are keen to stress to our audience that the Stamford Orchestra is their orchestra, in their local area – it gives them a great sense of ownership and I’d like to think that is reflected in the consistently high audience numbers.”

The orchestra, which is made up of members of the North West’s professional orchestras, has raised over £12,000 during the last two years for charity, donating ticket proceeds to MacMillan Cancer Support, UNICEF, Oxfam, Barnados, Syria Relief, Music for Kenya and Reverse Rett.

This will be the orchestra’s first family performance, and Pettitt said he hoped it was the first of many.

“We want to really involve the children by having them not just sit right in front of the orchestra but also in amongst the players, during the performance, so they can really experience the music by being really close to the players!”